Leaderboard

Iran 'threatening' Trump real estate in response is pretty chuckle worthy too.

Just wanted to say that this game is seriously incredible. I've played all the crpgs, thousands of hours probably. And I think PoE2 is right up there with BG2 for me. Just unbelievable. Well done Obsidian!

I also don't appreciate Full VO. For me it adds nothing to a game. I couldn't care less if it's all voiced or not. Honestly it's more likely that I get annoyed because the VO is messing with me reading the text. I like reading text. And books. Full VO in RPGs with lots of text is like reading a book while listening to the audiobook at the same time.

A smoking crater would be an aesthetic improvement over those hideous hotels.

I feel like Winston deserves a chance to challenge Favre for the most interceptions ever. He can get there by the end of the decade if he keeps it up.

Shadow of the Torture Porn Raider. I was at my company's home terminal yesterday. While the wifi there is by no means blazing fast, it's still significantly faster than the average truck stop wifi, so I was able to finish downloading the game. I'm glad it seems that this game will take place in a warmer locale. I wanted to rock a tank top in Rise, but I couldn't bring myself to make Lara wear that in Siberia. While running the benchmark to find my optimal graphical settings, I noticed Lara wearing a blue tank top, which made me happy, but she had on long pants. GIVE ME THE KHAKI SHORTS YOU COWARDS! I should scour Nexus Mods and such, somebody must have made a mod that allows me to turn Nu Lara into OG Lara if the game doesn't have the blue tank top and khaki shorts outfit available. I haven't played anything past the intro yet. True to form, the game starts out with a dirty, bloodied, and bruised Lara. Somebody at Eidos or Crystal Dynamics has a serious hard on for torture porn. I will give the developers a big thumbs up for giving me the option to fine tune difficulty, allowing me to turn exploration and puzzles to hard while keeping combat at normal.

My hot take is, that Deadfire has some of the best individual elements of any RPG I have played, but as a whole it doesn't come together as well as some other games. There is a lot of baggage that Deadfire is carrying (IE legacy), which doesnt serve its setting or goals, and some design decisions, which while I can appreciate, dont work in the game's favour. Its a game I can praise and complain about to no end.

I watched that Doom: Annihilation movie via Netflix. At least, if you count watching the little preview images flash by as you FFWD, watching. Actually, the first 10 minutes gives you a tiny hope it'll be watchable despite the TV look and budget, but it falls apart rapidly. That said, in terms of being "Doom," there's a few minor things about it that could be said to much better than that other Doom movie with Mr. Rock. Also, I discovered that linguist guy Erik Singer who does occasional videos for Wired, where he analyzes/comments on actors accent attempts. Watched all in one afternoon. He's low-key and great at speaking/explaining. Occasionally funny, sometimes informative, always interesting. In case you're like me and never know about these things until years later, he's the "Movie Accent Expert" in this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLibNZv5Zd0dzmgAyav3R8SfXc-64Oly_k

Don't ask me why, but it's working again. I was installing a new SSD in the m2 slot which was why the Vega came out in the first place and it wasn't working, replaced the old SSD (so fully removed the Vega again to get there) and it still didn't work, tried my old 580 in both situations and it worked, installed windows on the new SSD and went to bed. This afternoon I though I'd try some more troubleshooting since I had some spare time and the Vega works fine first time. Only thing I can think of is that I might have changed over which 8 pin sockets the two theoretically identical 8 pin power connectors from the PSU went into.

Wow, has it really been that long? I remember when you bought it!

Couldn't agree more. Also, the benefits of full VO are kind of hard to see; after all, you can give the gist of any given character with a relatively small number of voiced lines (see BG2 for example: I don't think any of the characters call for more voiced lines, everyone is perfectly satisfactory as is). Not only may full VO break the bank, but it also ties the developer's hands in a very significant sense: there is essentially no room for rewrites or even any kind of edits, even if you do get good ideas later on in the production. I would say that full VO is simply a bad idea, unless you have positively huge amounts of money to burn. I have not finished Disco Elysium yet, in fact I'm in day two at the moment. But boy it's good.

I just finished Disco Elysium and it is frankly amazing what you can do with dialogue when you don't have to pay for full VO. Yes, I am going to harp on this a lot, I think a lot of compromises we see in Deadfire is a result of full VO breaking the bank and tightening the development schedule.

I've recently created a new character in Pillars of Eternity. Being an avid roleplayer, I've written a profile and backstory. I'm posting it here to show it, and I'd love to hear what people think! Alendra Davar Full name: Alendra Eleanna Davar. Birthdate: 2808 AI. Age: 15-16. Titles: The Watcher. Race: Meadow Folk. Class: Cipher. Culture: Aedyr, Living Lands. Background: Aristocrat bastard (originally), Colonist. Backstory: The bastard daughter of Lord Santach of House Anuasal - an Aedyran noble family - and Gwreiddyn, a housemaid who died giving birth to her, Alendra was raised amongst the nobility for the first decade of her life. However, as she was a bastard, she did not receive her father’s noble name, taking her mother’s given surname of Davar instead. Alendra’s maternal grandfather, Caillte, was a Glanfathan tribal who, in the year 2784 AI, had been forced into indentured servitude in House Anuasal for reasons unknown. At the age of 10, it came to light that Alendra had the mental abilities of a Cipher, and a powerful one at that. Filled with prejudice and fear of her abilities, Alendra’s “noble” father had her, without warning, unceremoniously thrown out of the house and onto the street one rainy autumn morning. Alendra was forced to survive for weeks and months, begging and stealing for food. Almost a year after she had been cast out, Alendra was found by a man named Anam Cara, a member of her grandfather’s Glanfathan tribe who had come in search of his long-lost kin, but found Alendra instead. Anam Cara was a Glanfathan warrior and a Cipher like Alendra herself, and he took Alendra under his wing to foster her, teach her and train her in the ways of the Cipher as well as physical combat. With the help of an animancer, they also discovered that Alendra and her mother were essentially the same person; upon death during childbirth, Gwreiddyn's soul had immediately reincarnated into her daughter. However, Alendra does not possess any memories of her previous life. Due to ignorant persecution of Ciphers, the two had to leave the heart of the Aedyr Empire. As Anam Cara did not wish to return to his tribe, they signed up with a group of colonists and travelled to the Living Lands while keeping their Cipher abilities a secret. Alas, a few years after arriving at the colony, they were found out. The colonists proved to be far more ignorant and fearful than even Lord Anuasal, and they gathered a mob, complete with pitchforks and torches, to lynch them. Anam Cara sacrificed himself, staying behind so that Alendra could escape. After these harrowing events, Alendra travelled the world aimlessly, with no destination in mind...that is, until she joined a caravan heading to the Dyrwood under the leadership of Caravan Master Odema. Name etymology: Santach; Gaelic word that means “selfish, greedy”. Anuasal; a Gaelic word that means “lowborn, ignoble”. Gwreiddyn; a Gaelic word that means “root, origin”. Caillte; a Gaelic word that means “lost”. Anam Cara; a Celtic phrase meaning “soul friend”. Credits: Sathynae, for the image.

This is one of the times I disagree with them. I think they're enjoying a turd based on the fact that the other turds set in the same universe are so much smellier. I'm also surprised neither of them had an issue with Baby Yoda being super force potent diminishing Luke's interaction with him (honestly Yoda, what the hell, you're born with force control beyond anyone else, why bother the poor farm boy?) when they complained about Palpatine's being alive in Rise of Skywalker takes away from Vader's sacrifice.

I'm an Obsidian fan since back when they were Black Isle and put Deadfire as my top cRPG ever and one of my top games ever, but Disco Elysium completely earns its awards. I started playing it off a sale on dec 31st, 2019, and even after just 40 minutes of playing in 2019 it I was already ready to put in my top 5 games of the 2010s. Having played it all now, the gameplay has its problems (downgrading it to merely being top ten of the decade), but the writing is really a masterclass. Outer Worlds just doesn't come close, sorry.

Because people. At least not in the way you suggested. Because "Ehh pirate game, no thanks" beats "So you know I had a little bit of time and watched the whole thing where StreamerDude played 123 hours of Deadfire and found out stuff about the mobile fortress, islands with skillchecks and meaningful variations during a chase for a god and now I think I'd rather buy Flappy Bird" as a reasonable part of an explanation to why Deadfire sold vastly less copies despite getting similarly good reviews from press, streamers and players.

Full/extended VOs definitely earn a place in the "10 best ways to murder an RPG" list.

@Shyla: Interesting. For me there's not much difference whether it's tabletop or computer RPG (in this regard). I never play myself but always try to combine a mechanically interesting character with a plausible backstory that explains his stats and numbers in a somewhat original way. And then roll with it. Never thought about it to be honest: that people might approach those two forms of "role-playing" differently.

Why should I ask myself those questions when discussing the reasons for Deadfire's mediocre success? Those are things you can answer once you bought and played the game for quite some time - not when looking at it in a store, deciding whether to buy it or not. Here the possible explanation "different setting put off potential players" makes more sense.

@Boeroer That was what I was thinking, but it's never occurred to me. Something clicked reading this that I need to give this a try next time I start a game; writing backstories is one of my favorite things to do when playing tabletop games so it makes sense to try it here!

Obviously I can't answer for @Alendra - but that's totally the case for me. If I put some effort into a backstory etc. it immensely affects my choices in the game.

I think my favourite Obsidian game will always be Alpha Protocol. Great writing, great characters and the one game where I felt Obsidian were doing completely their own thing. Kotor II, FONV, Mask of the Betrayer, they all were standing one another's work. Pillars was its own thing, but a homage to what had come before. Outer Worlds too often reminds of FO or ME or even Borderlands. But AP is just AP.

One thing they could have done to not make it feel overwhelming, as many hubs do, is to gate some districts behind some cleverly crafted requirements. In general aesthetics-wise it is one the few best cities I've seen in a game. Its geometry is superb, as is the use of the 3rd dimension, its design and the order of the places where the player is guided is great, the content of the districts themselves makes sense, are beautiful and interesting, imho.

If I was Jason Licht I'd let JW walk, use the Franchise Tag on Kwon Alexander then see if one of the free agent QB's will take a two year deal. Rivers might. Then draft a QB in the 2nd Rounf. Someone like Fromm from UGA. might work

If he can keep up this year's blistering pace, he can do it in less than 9 years. I believe in you, Jameis.

Wounding (Drawn in Spring) is not based off of base damage but it's a multiplicative DoT-lash that is based on the pre-DR dmg roll you do. So if you roll 20 slash dmg the wounding will do additional 5 raw damage over time. Funny thing is that wounding also scales with MIG. So if you have 20 MIG it not only does 25% raw dmg as it says but actually 32.5% (6.5 in this csse). And if your INT is high it will spread that dmg over a longer time - if your INT is low it will take less time. So low INT is better for dps on this special case. A better weapon would be a stunning or overbearing one (Godansthunyr or Cladhaliath or We Toki) so that the shield bash crit would proc its Thrust of Tattered Veils more often. It's also easier to unlock Deathblows that way.

He will have to step it up a bit. Farve threw 336. JW has 88 so far so he needs 248 more. He's averaging 17.6 per season so he will need 14 more seasons.

Residential security drone.

Glad you've figured it out! If the file is getting too long you can create categories by grouping the code for similar effects into their own separate gamedatabundle files. You can also add comments by adding this line in the Components section of each effect: "Note": "", Write your text inside of the empty quotes. From what I can tell letters, numbers & punctuation are fine, just don't put extra quotation marks. Otherwise if something in the mod is not working as it should a good place to start is to check the "output_log.txt" file in the PillarsOfEternityII_Data folder. It's not the easiest thing to parse, but searching for any mention of a gamedatabundle's name will tell you if there was an error associated with it when you last loaded the game. Happy modding.

Ah, hah, so it wasn't climate change related at all!

https://abcnews.go.com/International/24-australians-arrested-deliberately-setting-fires-season/story?id=68108272&cid=clicksource_4380645_null_hero_hed What the hell is wrong with people?

First log-in of the year. Happy near year, everyone. Congrats to thelee on your Ultimate success! I'll have to check out your written guide soon. Can feel the itch coming back. All the talk of Arcane Dampener is reminding me of my attempts at maximizing Will just to force it to graze or miss. What a run-ender in random fights vs mages.

I'm pretty sure driving our RV across the country is better for the environment than flying, but I'm no expert. But my wife would definitely agree on the pitfalls of my emotional relationship to the thing. It's my baby, and it sasses less than my kids. Anyways, Facebook Marketplace is a crazy thing, I've got 4 different people already asking on it.

Y U lie? Roofles Beimg critical of our foreign affairs has nothing to do with love of country. Recognizing the hypocrisy of calling a Iranian General evil for killing Americans when the US kills people all over the world is not unpatriotic.

So Syberia 3 not only has the worst ending I've encountered in a long time but also the most insulting DLC ever. Has two, uh, "puzzles" and a ridiculous ending. Sokal et al. have some balls charging $5 for this, glad I got in the bundle.

Hi. It's not really least powerful on avererage - it's just so that it's a good class in prolonged kith, beasts and wilder fights but not good against all others (since no Flesh Communion then). Luckily there's also kith meat that stacks its barb-only PL bonus with all other PL bonuses. It only works with Barb abilities though. Since the drawback of the class is the +1 to Rage costs this means that the very cheap abities suffer most snce they get a 100% cost increase. If you tend to use very expensive abilites then it's not that bad (like Heart of Fury: only 25% increase). Since you can pile up a lot of Barb Power Levels with a Corpse Eater I would suggest SC Barb. Usually for a SC Barb I recommend Driving Roar since it's so cheap and powerful - but here the costs of this potential go-to ability would be doubled - so you could only use it half as much in non-Flesh-Communion fights. I would still propse one route that uses SC Barb though because there are some nice passives involved which cost no Rage at all and some high-cost abilites where the increased cost doesn't hurt as much: Carnage scales with PLs which includes the kith meat PLs. Frenzy costs 2 Rage which is darn expensive - but we can upgrade it to Blood Storm later which makes it last for a longer time (on kill) so the double costs hasn't that much impact anymore. In order to profit from the Blood route more we want to focus on crits and kills. Monastic Unarmed Training: kith meat PLs won't scale fists unfortunately, but still the combination of higher PL (due to Prestige) that scales with fists, the high base damage with high attack speed is pretty unique and best for Carnage damage (which is based on weapon base damage and fists have the best base dps). It's even great as backup crush weapon if you'd prefer other weapons later. Blooded: +25% dmg on everything once blooded is not bad, especially if we are looking at late(r) game stuff like Heart of Fury (which we can't use often so we better make sure it's worthwhile) and since our higher PLs will help us scale up the base damage of abilites and Carnage. Two Weapon Style Thick Skinned: AR is king in Deadfire and it costs no Rage Bloody Slaughter: we need crits and kills for Blood Storm so we might as well take this to speed up the killing a bit. One Stands Alone: no-brainer for a melee Barb imo. Bloodlust: killing faster after killing in order to kill faster? Okay... Savage Defiance: it's expensive but a good emergency button - especially in those cases you can't use Flesh Communion. Upgrade to Stalwart D. Interrupting Blows: we might crit a lot since we will attack quickly. We want to crit a lot because of Blood Frenzy/Storm. Interrupting as a side effect is neat. Improved Critical: it's not much but since it costs no Rage and we want to crit often anyways... Threatening Presence: nothing's more annoying than wanting to engage in a Fleh Communion but getting disengagement attacks in the process. Blood Thirst: obviously. Although we are fast because of fists + Two Weapon Style + Frenzy + Bloodlust we won't be superfast because we will be wearing thick armor. Blood Thirst also triggers off of DoT kills from Blood Frenzy etc. Heart of Fury: expensive but effective. Especially with a lot of stacked Power Levels and Empower. Great Soul: we want to use Empower with Heart of Fury as soften as possible. I didn't check if you an actually take all those abilites (if there's enough points). If there are you shoul alos invest in Accurate and Penetrating Empower. Barbaric Retaliation: having high AR and being able to regain health via Flesh Communion or Stalwart Defiance is great for this. As soon as you get this you can use Battle Axes + Bleeding Cuts instead of fists and use the fists as backup weapon vs. crush resistant/immune foes. Since recovery doesn't matter much when retialiating but the Bleeding Cuts still get applied, killing off foes quickly which triggers Blood Thirst (and so on)... It's also nice to be able to retaliate while using Flesh COmmunion. Prestige: we want more Power Levels. With this, Power Level 9, Stone of Power (see below) and Willspring of Life you will have fists that get +65% damage, +18 accuracy and +5 PEN (+7 with modal on when using HoF and when cathcing crits with Barb's Retaliation) which is better than legendary quality. And it costs you no enchanting resources. I would go Nature Godlike (+1 PL while Frenzied or Robust). You are a flesh devouring tree. That's because you need the extra PL to lift the fists from post-superb to post-legendary status. Grab Hylea's Talons for the lashes. The DoT is great on enemies. Watch your health though... As armor you might want to aim for Kāhako Nihi since the 10% piercing lash is great for your dps. Also the enchantments are nice. Until then use Nomad's Brigandine (no engagement - great for running to a Flesh Communion event). Bloody Links with the +2 AR enchantment on bloodied is also good. Patinated Plate is the best armor for Barbaric Retaliation - but I don't think it fits the whole cannibalistic theme very well. Use a Blunting Belt. A Ring of Greater Regeneration is nice. Get two Stones of Power so you can stack and unstack them after each fight (gives you +1 PL in every encounter). I like Three Trolls Stiched as a cape for this one. Ragged Cloak would alse be nice to substitute Barbaric Retaliaion. Use potion of Ascension to lift your fists up one complete tier (e.g. from post-legandary to post-mythic quality which would be +80% dmg, +22 ACC and +6 PEN). It's an approach with rel. little use of active abilities so it's good for AI usage, too. You'd only have to decide when to use Flesh Communion and when it's best to unleash (an empowered) HoF. ---- The other route would be a Warlock (Corpse Eater/Bloodmage) with focus on Concelhaut's Draining Touch. This is the one handed weapon with the highest base damage (great for Carnage again). It also drains 20% dmg as health, causes corrode dmg, causes Weakened on hit and targets will instead of deflection(!!!). You mission will be to lower enemies' Will defense and crit-kill around with the Draining Touch while draining health. I'm just mentioning the most important feats here. You don't need to take them at level up if you can have the spell in a grimoire of course: Arkemyr's Dazzling Lights: besides the Dazing it causes -10 Will directly which stacks with Miasma Frenzy: we are going the Spirit Tornado route this time. Not only does it stagger on all spell-hits but also it terrifies. This build not only wants to lower enemies' Will in order to wreak havoc with the Draining Touch but also in order to easily frighten and terrify them to increase its survivability. Barbaric Yell --> Barbaric Shout: this will give us +3 Engagement and shake foes (for the times we can't lower their will otherwise, this will do, too). We want to stack engagement because of the items I have in mind (see down below). Miasma of Dull-Mindedness: drops Will by 40 points due to -10 RES and -10 INT. So -50 with Dazzling Lights. Weapon Proficiency Club: use a club + modal in your offhand. This will not do tremendous dmg but lower enemies' Will by another -25 points. That's -75 after all. You can guess your Draining Touch (which targets Will) might crit often. If you have a party member with a club you could skip this and either use another weapon or go with Draining Touch as single-handed weapon. I like to use Kapana Taga since its enchantments are awesome. It works especially well with the item setup I want to suggest later on which is based on engagement as I already said. Concelhaut's Draining Touch: do not take this ability! Wait what? Yeah - do not pick it at level-up. There's a little cheesy trick that makes your Draining Touch stay for the whole fight and not go *pouf* after one hit. And it works like this: use a Grimoire with Draining Touch in it. Summon it. Then - before attackng anybody, switch to a Grimoire which has NO Draining TOuch in it. Go fight! Your draining fist will be with you till the end of the encounter. Maybe you can even skript the AI like that (never tried). All Ryngrim's stuff: terrify them while punching them to corrosive pulp! all self buffs: they are just awesome. Essential Phantom: it always retains the Draining Touch. It wil not go away after a hit. So instead of one guy punching terrified enemies to pulp you now got two. Also the Kapana-Taga engagement slots will work with it. Lion's Sprint: you can boost a spell's ACC by 15 with this. This can be very valuable. Blood Lust + Blood THirst: obviously Bloody Slaugter: why not. Improved Critical: also nice. Two Weapon Style Brute Force: Draining Touch weakens and Spirit Frenzy staggers. That's -20 fortitude just like so. So taking Brute Force can help to land more hits with your club and Carnage. Not essential but can be nice. Barbaric Smash can be nice. It's rel. easy to kill an enemy with the high dmg of Draining Touch, especially since Barbaric Smash has increased dmg bonus hit and crit (they stack). You will get only 2 Rage back (it costs 3) - but still not bad. Use the Reckless Brigandine asap. It will give you +1 Engagement. Together with Kapana Taga you'll have 3 already. If you yell around you can get to 6 engagemnt slots for a long time. This means the Reckless Brigandine can lift you up to +30% Action speed (stacks with Frenzy etc.). Also you will be keeping enemies away from your party members. Also use Whitewitch Mask in order to have an emergency plan and terrifiy enemies if you get bloodied too quickly. The +1 Illusion also helps of course. Now start to summon Draining Touch first of all. Yell and then use Miasma, Dazzling Lights etc. to lower enemies' Will and get them engaged. Hack around a bit until you feel it's too much. You might have up to 6 engagements now. Use a terrify. It will most likely hit or crit. Enemies will want to leave and due to the buggy disengagment mechanics some of them will eat your disengagment attacks from the Draining Touch which are very nasty. Follow them and hit them hard with the Draining Touch. Feed on them after you kill them. The terrify will often make sure that you don't get bothered. Use regenertion gear and Corrosive Siphon to heal. Blood Sacrifice will take its toll if you use it so better make sure you have a good source of healing. Using Blood Sacrifice for refilling Corrosive Siphon in combo with Blood Thirst and Spirit Frenzy can be a very smart move. Do NOT use Threatening Presence. This is a nice combo of tanky enemy sponge + CC + damage.

And here I am with my three weeks of PTO banked up for just that occasion .

Yes but... the game probably would have done better with a more traditional setting. In terms of sales to general audiences. I think the setting is quite refreshing for a game of this type but... eh we're not the casual audience are we?

^But he's not holding up a vegan.

Yeah, I'd say Deadfire is definitely up there. If you take into account improvements in design and technology it's the best. I really like the companions of Deadfire, but 3 of them are from PoE, so obviously a lot of what makes Deadfire great comes from the first game. It's a great sequal, that improves and builds upon everything, doesn't make some of the mistakes.

I just hope Obsidian doesn't give up on making RTwP cRPGs like POE... I mean, I know that we have evidence that they are making another one (despite Sawyer's denial), but during such a reemergence of this type of game, the thought of them giving up is downright frightening for me. I didn't play isometric RPGs in the 90s because I was just a little kid - I played Fallout Tactics when I was like 11 and then played Fallout 1 and 2 but didn't even know of Icewind Dale or anything. It was POE 1 that really got me into the genre in 2017. I absolutely love the style and writing and combat and armor+weapons and abilities in POE 1 and 2 and POE 2 immediately became one of my top three all time favorite games. Maybe we'll see some announcement soon after POE 2 is released on consoles, like at the upcoming Microsoft/Xbox conference or E3, still though the thought of them giving up is genuinely disheartening. I'm definitely glad though that the isometric RPG genre in general seems to be making a notable comeback.

I keep wondering how many people have actually beat megabosses on TB mode for precisely the length reason. I mean I know someone beat the Ultimate but I don't think they shared their videos anywhere. Dorudugan sounds like an absolute chore in TB mode. The original IE games did have multiplayer RTwP. I think it works reasonably well for casual players on a lower difficulty setting (I tried it a few times with a few friends), but anything more than that and everyone is constantly stepping on each other's toes trying to pause/unpause the game. Definitely not feasible for like BG2 dragon/lich battles. Though it was like a real authentic, low-level AD&D experience in BG because we'd keep getting each other killed by wandering off and getting crit by gibberlings and there's no real way to reload so we'd have to keep importing new characters in the multiplayer arbitration menu.

Usually TB titles don't have (a lot of) trash mob fights. Those are a thing in Action RPGs (where it's nearly all trash mobs) and to a lesser extent in RTwP RPGs. Because TB fights take way longer designers try to avoid meaningless encounters as fillers. In RTwP games players tend to do the "select all, attack opponent x" routine once fights become too easy. I don't see that as an advantage per se - but it takes less real time (not game time) since you don't have to issue a lot of commands via pausing. The outcome of the fight will be suboptimal - but who cares if you regenerate health and resources after every combat anyway (this was different in PoE where even the most laughable encounter could take away some precious health or spell uses). That's also why TB mode in Deadfire is too lengthy for some folks - because the encounter compositions didn't change to accommodate for the longer fights. Luckily Deadfire doesn't have a ton of trash mob fights (for a native RTwP game) so it still works ok. I'd generally say that people who like action games tend to prefer RTwP while players who prefer tactical/strategy games prefer TB. Funny then that RTwP plays less good on a console though. I mean if it's a party based RPG where you control all characters (unlike Outer Worlds and such). Also RTwP is pretty impossible to do as multiplayer version. Another reason why it's not the preferred option of most devs I'd wager.

Btw @Jill7894, as a RTwP fan you should also keep your eyes on two games that will/may be releasing in 2020: The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes; and, Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness.

I strongly agree. I did try D:OS2 and even Bard's Tale IV, and the turn-based combat simply isn't immersive. I know that RTwP also has strict mechanics running in the background, but at least it gives a proper impression/illusion of things in free flow. In TB, the combatants simply stand around most of the time, giving the impression of transmogrified Chess (nicely put!). I know perfectly well which one's more suited for me. This is probably a question of temperament -- some people prefer one, others the other. I think it's good that both are there, but I'll always pick RTwP.

Wayyyy more immersive and I completely understand what you mean when you say it's an actual battle. For instance, with RTwP the typical combat experience my party may run into could be relatively short depending on how well I'm playing it, but when an epic battle pops off it feels very natural. The first time I took on the Kraken in POE 2, it took, idk, at least 10 minutes to beat him and I was soooo excited and happy once I did. The feeling I get after an epic battle with RTwP reminds me of how I feel when I beat a boss in Dark Souls - like I want to jump up (and a lot of times I do) in enthusiasm and excitement. I don't like how turn-based makes things artificially long and drawn out and by the time I'm done with a turn based battle, I might get some excitement, but overall I'm just relieved it's over with so that I no longer have to wait in suspense to see if the enemy is going to pull some crap that screws me over and makes me have to redo everything while I have no control of my forces. I like having that consistent control over my party and I believe that RTwP is better perhaps for people who want to be more aggressive in combat. It seems like turn based, with it's forced pauses between your instances of control, degrades the utility of aggression and quick thinking in many of its capacities. Some of my favorite games outside of cRPGs are games like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Nioh so it's probably a given that I prefer the utility of aggression and quick thinking. Plus, I'm not a patient person and sitting around waiting for my turn feels quite redundant. Anyways, so far I've gotten Spellforce 3 (it's supposedly longer than Soul Harvest so I'm starting with this one first) and Tower of Time.

What'll really bake one's noodle is how suppressing effects like Suppress Affliction and Arcane Dampener vs duration-reduction effects like Cleanse interact differently with durational effects. For the unaware, if you have a buff that is suppressed you can't refresh that buff. Casting it again won't do anything, and can mess up simple AI scripts because the AI will think they're missing an inspiration/buff and try to re-cast that inspiration/buff, only to no effect. If you have a custom AI script that has a 0 second cooldown on this kind of conditional, your character will happily eat through all their class resource trying to recast the buff. However, you can still interact with inspirations/afflictions that are suppressed via normal countering/overriding mechanics, even as they're suppressed. All this has some odd interactions; in some cases, Arcane Dampener and Suppress Affliction and Liberating Exhortation--despite being lower level effects compared to Arcane Cleanse or Minor Intercession or similar duration adjusting effects--are actually much better than the direct duration-adjustment effects: For example, some enemies have basically unlimited use of their buffs and will happily just rebuff if their effect is dispelled. If you Arcane Cleanse it away, you just spent a valuable AL9 casting slot only to just waste one of their actions to rebuff it. If, on the other hand, you suppress it, they can't refresh their buff while it's supressed. If you're in one of those fights where you're getting charmed/dominated a lot by the same effect, you're better off suppressing it then trying to counter it. Successive attempts at dominate/charm won't do anything (unless it's a different named effect). If you have afflictions on your characters that are actively suppressed, you can still counter them by casting a paired inspiration, so that when the suppression wears off they don't get the affliction back. Suppression can be a good way to buy yourself time to do some cleanup like this (since most suppression effects I can think of are very fast cast). Also, the only use I've ever found for Potions of Major Recovery (-10s to hostile durations) is to accelerate how quickly dampener wears off, because man it sucks getting hit with one.